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Monthly Archives: January 2016

What did you encounter in the rabbit hole last week? Now we act on it, give in to a part of it, break away in response to it. Movin’ out from Mercury retrograde and bringing the intensity along for the ride. Onward, ho.

How are you feeling about yourself these days? About how others are seeing you? The key factor may be how much of your real self you are showing. The Leo Full Moon encourages reveling in your most creative, authentic self and noticing who gets you, who’s joining the revels and who absolutely does not.

It’s neither trivial nor selfish. Incentive has been pouring down on you to drop pretense, strip away masks and posturing, and just be yourself. It’s been increasingly apparent which trappings, connections, goals and priorities feel right and which do not. Now comes a progress report with a call for action. It’s time for another round of cutting away what doesn’t feel right, appreciative or supportive. Then take a bow and celebrate with what remains.

The moving-on imperative runs deep. It has a long fuse, too. If you don’t feel up to dealing with a particular situation just yet, the time will come. The Full Moon is forming an action-demanding aspect with Mars, warrior god and ruler of our drive, in the sign of Scorpio. Mars is the ancient ruler of Scorpio, so he has an immunity to the often terrifying nature of its bottomless waters.

Logic is giving way to a knowing or gut feeling now. You’re getting a call to value your unique light and be selective about where you invest it. Questions that are likely to pass through your mind now include: Who appreciates you? Who fans and fuels your light? Who shares their light with you in return?

This Full Moon will simplify a lot. Acting out may be part of the process. If an inner child feels ignored or unseen, it will demand attention, somehow. Bored inner children, on the other hand, may just want to play and have fun, an impulse you have every incentive to indulge.

If something feels off, nothing will shake the feeling except confronting and acting on it. If something feels right, magnetic, gotta-have-it, nothing will stop the pursuit. That pursuit could involve deeper, more powerful self-expression as much as it might involve another person. Mars is being activated to fish or cut bait. The pressure is on for situations to either take on greater intensity, intimacy and commitment, or suffer a cosmic scalpel coming down on them, with no take backs. Either development carries the potential for profound healing of longstanding feelings of unworthiness, or being invisible, or of being hesitant to shine for fear someone will extinguish our spark.

This Full Moon will not, of course, magically remove every situation that makes us uncomfortable. Some will survive. The discomfort will not, however, go away. We may still have more to learn about our natural right to shine (and even stand out!) in our pack.

A fire is being stoked, though. A fuse is being lit. The ignition is being turned in all manner of escape pods. All of these are scheduled to grow in strength and insistence over the course of the year. This Full Moon is under the command of Uranus, awakener and bringer of radical liberation. (That’s because the Moon is in the sign the Sun rules, Leo, and the Sun is in the sign Uranus rules, Aquarius.) He’s got an easy collaboration building with Saturn, ruler of structures and the status quo. Their teamwork is scheduled to combust around Christmas (and two more times in 2017).

The feedback your emotions are delivering now contains clues about what’s coming. (With a wild card element of course — nothing is ever certain when Uranus is involved.) That’ll happen on its own time, organically, and probably when you don’t see it coming. Keep your attention in time present. Strut upon your stage. Note how the reaction makes you feel about yourself. Honor those feelings, even if — especially if — they are subterranean, intense and nonrational. They’re delivering your cues.

Desires are stirring for something more, something real, something we can bank on. Along with the motivation to make it so — undercover if need be. In the process we blow the carbon out, clear our minds and sense exactly what our hearts have to do.

Time for a turning point. Desire can build for any so long until something breaks open — or apart. And you get very, very clear. focused and stabilized. Handy qualities for walking about in all this fog.

This year’s Capricorn New Moon brings a good, long stretch to ground and get centered. It comes with a mega-dose of antidotes to the confusion that is swirling all around. They direct attention to where we are here and now, on this earth, where we’ve been and where we are heading.

The line-up is appropriate for January, which is named for Janus, the two-headed Roman god who looked both backward and forward. Capricorn’s goal-orientation generally concentrates on the path ahead, often far ahead. This Moon is comes with incentive to reconsider and potentially recommit to that path and clean up practicalities that affect it.

Heart-based considerations weight heavily in this process. Capricorn may be calculating, at times coldly so, and that bent is pervading interactions, relationships and financial matters now. It’s keenly attuning us to costs, to the return we’re getting on emotional and financial investments, and to the desirability and viability of certain arrangements for the long haul.

This awareness comes geared for action. We’re all primed to pull the plug, to cut out, back or away, to investigate, to clean up and restructure and, in selected instances, to commit — quickly, ruthlessly, determinedly, unapologetically. An appropriate guiding image is emptying a closet, sorting its contents into piles — keepers; repair; give away; toss — and actually following through with each decision.

This Moon bears the stamp of the two rulers of desire and money, Venus (representing earthly, mere mortal levels) and Pluto (representing super-sized impulses and experiences beyond conscious comprehension or control). Pluto is standing with the Sun and the Moon, both of which passed by the dark lord’s clarifying, purifying scythe en route to their meeting. Whatever we want, we want with a vengeance; whatever we don’t, we’re done with, no turning back.

Venus is in the clutches of Saturn, ruler of Capricorn this Moonand lord of structure, rules, convention, responsibility. They mean business and are delivering the worldly equivalent of Pluto’s imperative, with theme songs in the background: “Santa Baby,” alternating with “All The Single Ladies” (“If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it.”) No more window shopping. Want it? Buy it. Commit to it. Not really interested? Watch walls, obstacles and separations intervene to remove it.

Sounds easy enough, but there’s a catch: Your physical senses are operating at a disadvantage. Surface appearances are not the true story right now. Structure-loving Saturn is in a protracted argument with Neptune, lord of escapism, transcendence and illusion. Neptune is also, however, the lord of higher love — the elevated, spiritual counterpart of Venus’ domain. Venus is being pulled into this dust-up by virtue of her meeting with Saturn. The upshot is a demand to bring your heart’s desire into physical form. (If you’ve been fooling yourself about a situation, that fantasy could turn to dust as well.) Seeds planted under this New Moon stand to blossom by the end of the month, when Venus links cooperatively with Neptune.

Before then, we’ll be giving the groundwork a good going over. This New Moon comes on the heels of two gear shifts that issue marching orders to do just that. One is Mercury, ruler of our information and transportation flow, backing into Capricorn. His retrograde journey not only adds to the atmosphere of confusion and misunderstandings, but from this point on also underscores the Moon’s focus on foundations and goals. If there’s a glitch, a loose brick, a cracked support, a garbled piece of critical information, it is likely to come to your attention, with the benefit that you can do something about it now and be able to proceed reliably later. (For more on Mercury’s retrograde, read my survival guide.)

The other is Jupiter in the earth sign of Virgo going retrograde until mid-May, which will trigger many an opportunity to revisit and clean up systems, boundaries, structures and infrastructures that are emerging from the upheaval we’ve undergone since 2012. Bountiful Jupiter began helping Pluto with the reconstruction in September, and will beam his input directly again in March and June. Because Jupiter is stationing retrograde on the North Node of the Moon (which represents the collective, as well as the path in which we are headed), specific issues and circumstances of this week will ultimately play a role in our future.

Although the sorting may happen in a flash, none of the rest of this comes with a hurried pace. The pile-up in Capricorn is slow and methodical, laying foundations that will take a while to dry, planting seeds that will gestate before blooming. Instead of fighting it, enjoy the luxury of time. The ability to go deep and explore is at your disposal, now that Mars (ruler of our drive) has entered Scorpio. Use it to navigate fearlessly through the fog, to look at what’s beneath appearances and, more importantly, what’s beneath your feet, and to commit truly, madly, deeply to your heart’s streamlined, ever so worldly desires.

Everything in the sky says, “Get to work!” First on the agenda: Old business. Business you thought was finished. Business systems you didn’t know needed work. What’s that sound like? Yes, my friends, it’s time for another Mercury retrograde.